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How Curation Got Jody MacPherson on TV on Election Night

When PR professional Jody MacPherson first started her personal Scoop.it page on politics, she had no idea that she would end up on TV.

The political world around election time is just about as fast-paced as fast-paced gets. It’s easy to get lost in the number of tweets, blogs, news sites, facts, and not-so-factual musings. Today, social media is arguably one of the biggest influencers of elections and political opinions.

During the most recent election in Alberta, Canada, Jody MacPherson discovered that this is both a great and an overwhelming fact. Jody is passionate about politics and was part of the political party who was challenging the current administration. Knowing how difficult it is for most people to follow along and find all of the right (and factual) information, and being a PR professional by day, Jody found that curation was the next logical step to help her spread her political mission.

Establishing Credibility and Becoming a Resource

Jody began by tracking Twitter hashtags related to the election and political party that she was a part of. Every single day, she went through all of the information found on these hashtags and spent a lot of time sifting through it and pulling out the most important content. At the end of each day, she ended up with a collection of the best and most share-worthy articles to which she could add her own perspective to guide her readers. Jody says that there was so much information coming at the citizens of Alberta from so many different directions, and using Scoop.it to curate this information helped her bring all of the news coverage to one place.

Upon curating all of the best content on Alberta politics during the weeks leading up to the election, Jody grew an audience within her community and reached over 24,000 views on her topic. By curating information on Scoop.it and sharing her knowledge throughout her social networks, she was able to establish herself as a credible resource for other members and followers of her political party.

Election Night in Alberta

Because of the great impact of social media on the election process this year in Alberta, it was decided that each of the four political parties would select a Social Media expert to participate in a live panel discussion (on TV!!) on politics and social media. Because of her curation of political news, Jody says, she was selected to represent her political party on the panel. As a member of the panel, Jody joined three other social media experts to discuss the influence of social media and the web on the elections. The panel continued throughout Election Night, and at the end, it was discovered that Social Media actually changed the outcome of the election due to bloggers and other social media evangelists bringing light to certain issues and the candidates’ stances on them.

Jody MacPherson, who now works for the City of Calgary as a Communications Supervisor, went from a PR professional with a passion for politics to a Political Resource and Social Media Expert on a live television panel on election night simply by spending some time out of every day curating and sharing information on the topic that matters to her.

What about you? What are some pleasantly surprising results you’ve seen from your Scoop.it pages? Let us know in the comments.

About Ally Greer

Ally is Scoop.it's Director of Content & Community. She loves to geek out over anything social, Internet, or tech related. When she isn't working, you'll probably find her running the streets of San Francisco. Follow Ally on Twitter @allygreer.